


internal structure of the elegy: grief to consolation*

by tomas_abe



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Feelings, Friendship, Gen, Poetry, Some of it can be read as non-platonic love if you're into that, Women Being Awesome, Women talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 22:37:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12045741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomas_abe/pseuds/tomas_abe
Summary: “Now, kids. Elegies are tricky to define. They’re supposed to be about mourning the dead. So, because of the subject matter, they tend to be sad, serious pieces. Not! Not to be confused with the more formal eulogy or the very short epitaph.In our more contemporary times, the elegy is not used exclusively for the death of people but also used to express a more general sense of loss.Loss of innocence. Of home, wealth, etcetera etcetera. Note, however, that structurally, most elegies tend to end in a tone of consolation.Got it? Good."





	internal structure of the elegy: grief to consolation*

I. lamento de los sobrevivientes (survivor’s lament)  


“Well, sweetheart, maybe if you had-”

Alex and Eliza are arguing again. Worse than that, they are doing so in that snippy passive-aggressive way they’ve taken to doing since- well. 

Since Jeremiah’s death. 

It’s awful. The way they string together words and tone and hollow smiles into sharp little blades capable of cutting to the quick, peeling back layers of skin and muscle and artifice until there is nothing left but brittle-human bones and fragile grieving hearts and-

A door slams. It’s followed by the thudding sounds of Alex’s heavy boots stomping on pavement as she storms out of the house in a fit of anger.

Eliza slams pots and pans and plates against seemingly every available kitchen surface, dragging metal against metal until the hairs on Kara’s arms stand on end.

Kara feels like crawling out of her skin. Feels like dragging her nails down her face or shattering every sun-strengthened little bone hidden deep inside her ear just so that she can stop hearing this slow but steady crumbling of familial faith and love.

She can’t handle hearing what’s left of her family become undone. She can’t. She can’t. She can’t.

Not when her every step is shadowed by familiar grief. Not when the ghosts of a planet lost doggedly hold on to the cracked crevices of her mind, digging their fingers and pulling and pulling until she feels split into parts, themselves all splintered and bleeding and painful.

Kara anxiously tries not to listen as Eliza drops a pot heavily onto the sink before stomping towards the front door, already calling after Alex with a helpless kind of anger that rumbles in Kara’s ears and tightens muscles at that spot between her shoulder blades.

Rao. What a shitty day.

And this coming from the girl that, if she stays inside her head long enough, can taste the edges of bad days gone by. 

(Days where worlds end and days where the darkness of space swallows her pleading cries and days where she can’t stop hurting people)

From outside:  
“Dammit Mom! Why can’t you just-”

Kara grabs her backpack, swings it onto her shoulders, shimmies down the tree by her window, and, as soon as her feet touch the ground, takes off at a hurry.

A human-paced hurry. 

///

II.

“Eliza?”

“Kara, where are you?”

“At Mr. Denny’s. He’s letting me feed the horses,” then, more quietly, “things got a little loud.”

A sigh.

“Be back by 9. And _please_ be careful. I need you to be careful Kara.”

“I will. I will.”

“Promise me, Kara. _Promise_ that you’ll-”

“I promise. I will be careful, I swear.”

Another sigh.

///

III.

Kara didn’t lie. 

With the neighing sounds of Mr. Denny’s horses, tall and muscular and majestic, washing over her, Kara takes out a book from her hastily-grabbed backpack. 

The cover is falling off, the binding is cracked, author washed away from water damage, title faded but still legible to Kara’s overly-discerning eyes.

**_EL RAYO QUE NO CESA_ **

Kara is careful in opening the book, lightly tracing a dirt covered finger over its worn pages, idly skimming the poem titles until one catches her attention. 

_Elegía_

Kara pauses. 

_Elegy_.

How had Mrs. Yen, described the word in class? Kara furrows her brow in trying to remember, until:

“ _Now, kids. Elegies are tricky to define. They’re supposed to be about mourning the dead. So, because of the subject matter, they tend to be sad, serious pieces. Not! Not to be confused with the more formal eulogy or the very short epitaph._  
_In our more contemporary times, the elegy is not used exclusively for the death of people but also used to express a more general sense of loss._  
_Loss of innocence. Of home, wealth, etcetera etcetera. Note, however, that structurally, most elegies tend to end in a tone of consolation._  
_Got it? Good._  
_Now, moving onto common themes… first, there is sometimes an element of deep longing-”_

(Kara understands longing. The wanting. The yearning. 

The missing)

She wavers for a moment longer, unsure of whether she should read a poem about mourning when she’s already feeling raw and disquieted and more than a little sad.

The distant bark of a dog causes the horses to neigh nervously, trotting away from the sound and closer to Kara. She listens to their breathing, the expanding of their chests as they inhale, and then slowly, haltingly, begins to read out loud, soft voice carried away by the wind.

_(In Orihuela, his town and mine, has died, as if struck by lightning, Ramón Sijé, with whom I shared so much love.)_

_I wish to be the peasant that works the earth_  
_you lie in and fertilize,  
my soul’s companion, too soon. _

_My grief, without instrument,_  
_feeds the rains, horns and organs,  
as I give your heart as sustenance, _

_to the desolate poppies._  
_So much pain pools at my side  
that it pains it hurts to even breathe. _

_A hard slap, a frozen blow,_  
_an invisible and homicidal axe-swing,  
a brutal thrust has felled you. _

_There is no greater thing than this wound, this hurt,_  
_I weep my misfortune and its trials  
and I feel your death more than I do my life. _

_I walk over the tracks of the dead,_  
_and without warmth from anyone, or consolation,  
I move from that within my heart to my obligations. _

Kara’s breath hitches.

_Early did death rise in flight,_  
_early did daybreak dawn,  
early are you surrounded by the ground. _

_I do not forgive lovesick death,_  
_I do not forgive thoughtless life,  
I do not forgive the earth nor nothingness. _

_In my hands, a storm rises_  
_of rocks, lightning, and harsh axes,  
thirsty for catastrophe, and hungry. _

_I want to gnaw at the earth with my teeth,_  
_I want to split the earth apart bit by bit  
with dry, burning bites. _

The words swim slightly out of focus.

_I want to mine the earth until I find you,_  
_and kiss your noble skull,  
and un-shroud you, and bring you back. _

_You’ll return to my garden-_

Kara drops the book, digging her hands into her hair, breathing unevenly.

(A mistake. This was a mistake)

Unable to take the thrumming restlessness curling her toes, Kara takes off running. 

Runs until she can’t hear the sounds of sleepy Midvale. Runs until she can’t smell the ocean. Runs and runs and runs until she looks down and realizes the soles of her feet are grazing the ends of the tall grass fields instead of actually stepping on them.

Panicked, Kara dives for the ground, landing in a graceless tumble and sending dirt, grass, and what must be shit flying out from the point where her knees make contact with previously compact ground. 

As her knees make deep grooves, Kara can feel how this (awful terrible Rao-forsaken) planet clings to her face through the little specks of fly-away earth that lodge themselves onto her eyelashes, the dip above her chin, the curve of her cheeks.

Kara doesn’t wipe the dirt away though. Instead, she digs her fingers into the ground and leans her forehead against the loosened soil under her grip, teeth bared, swallowing down the scream clawing at her chest, her spine, the roof of her mouth.

No sound escapes her lips.

The same can’t be said about her tears.

///

IV.

That night:  
whispered words press against the smooth fabric of a white gown, long outgrown. 

“Early did death rise in flight, early did daybreak dawn.  
May Rao illuminate a path into Himself. May your light join His and may you warm the far reaches of the universe, child and sun, together at last.”

///

V.

Kara heals. 

Maybe.

///

VI.

(The words remain, as a tattered beaten-up library book travels up California’s coast to National City, strong alien hands always careful in their handling)

///

VII. meditación (meditation)

At night, the city stumbles into a lethargic darkness that is more twilight than a true void of color.

Leaning her arms against the railing of the topmost balcony of CatCo’s gleaming skyscraper, Kara listens to the revelry of the streets below. People shouting and singing and drinking gleefully as the St. Patrick’s Day Parade begins to wind down at last.

“Does it ever bother you?” 

Turning her head slightly, Kara stares at the shorter woman with a raised eyebrow, befuddlement clear in her expression.

It’s not an unusual feeling. This surprise.

Kara, in moments of passing fancy and wild imaginings, sometimes thinks that Cat Grant is more made up of quicksilver wit and mercurial ingenuity than flesh and blood, holding together all those temperamental elements that compose her being with sheer human stubbornness. 

It’s not hard to imagine, Cat Grant willing herself into being. 

An unexpected gift to the universe.

“Well?” Cat asks, “does it ever bother you?”

“What does?” Kara asks, honestly unsure of what she’s being asked.

“Them,” Cat says, motioning dismissively at the ongoing party in the streets below, “us. How untroubled we are. Unburdened.”

Kara hums in thought, still surprised by the question. 

(She tries to think of how to express that humans are hardly untroubled or unburdened. If they were, there would be little need for her)

“‘I feel your death more than I do my life.’”

“How morbid,” Cat drawls out, a gleam of concern appearing in her eyes, betrayed by a minuscule furrowing of her brow.

“It’s from a Spanish poem,” Kara explains, smiling gently at Cat, “You humans are sadder than you think.”

“Maybe so,” Cat concedes, shockingly enough, “but, how can our sorrows compare? To…” 

(Cat trails off but the words linger: How can our sorrows compare to those of a dead planet?  
A civilization lost?  
The loneliness of being one of a remaining few?)

“Why must they? Pain is pain, no matter the source.  
And pain runs deep in all our hearts.”

///

VIII.

“I read your Spanish poem Supergirl.”

“Really? I was actually surprised you didn’t know it already.”

“Well, not everyone is an expert on the literary works of Spain’s Generation of '27,” Cat replies chasteningly.

“Of course,” Kara demurs, “my apologies for assuming.”

Cat rolls her eyes with a huff, the action pulling an affectionate smile from somewhere deep in Kara’s chest. 

She really does adore this tiny whirlwind of a woman. 

“Why that line though?” Cat asks, gaze suddenly sharp and shrewd, “Why that poem?”

“I am unsure,” Kara says, “I think it must be because I remember it often.”

The line had always resonated with her, especially back then, when Kara was so constantly hurting. 

(Back then, when it felt as if this newly minted life of hers were just the dreams of a girl trapped in a place forgotten by light and basic decency)

Back then when everything was odd and disjointed. Days and time blending together in a sightless blur.

Even now, looking back on those days, her memories are unfocused, only the pain and grief remembered with crystal clarity, her home’s absence a bright and sharp beacon rising above any other detail.

“Because it made me cry,” Kara whispers, admission fragile in the space between hero and human.

“Oh,” Cat breathes out, expression unreadable until, awkwardly, hesitantly, she places a hand on Kara’s forearm and gently pats it.

A show of sympathy. 

(Huh)

A self-made gift to the universe indeed.

///

IX. meditación II (meditation II)

“Do you ever feel like we’re just making the same mistakes as those before us.”

“'I walk over the tracks of the dead,’” Kara replies idly, focus mostly on trying to covertly push aside the kale in her salad.

“Huh. Is that from a poem?”

“Oh,” Kara looks up and blushes, “yes.”

“It sounds familiar,” Lena admits, forehead wrinkled in thought, “Do you know the rest of the stanza?”

“I do,” at her companion’s expectant look, Kara dutifully continues, “'I walk over the tracks of the dead, and without warmth from anyone, or consolation-’”

“'I move from that within my heart to my obligations,’” Lena finishes. 

Kara blinks in surprise, kale forgotten.

“We had a unit on modern European poetry back in boarding school,” Lena says, smile bashful and small, “Hernández right?”

“Yes. Miguel Hernández.”

“Well, the passage feels fitting, doesn’t it?”

And in this moment, Kara finds herself utterly fond of Lena, this lonely queen of reinvention, who strives to help people, not out of obligation or a misguided desire to please, but rather out of a deep well of sympathy for the plight of others. 

And an ardent love of humanity. 

Kara reaches for Lena’s hand and holds it between her own, making sure her friend’s focus is on her.

(Her friend. Dear and stubborn and more good than she believes herself to be)

“No. Not at all,” Kara denies, a fervent kind of urgency behind her words, “I spoke mindlessly. Mostly because I often think back on that passage. But it is not fitting. Not truly.  
Because you are full of heart. And because, this I swear, you are not alone,” Kara hardens her tone, willing every ounce of her belief into words, “You are not making the same mistakes as your brother or your father. How can you think that you’re retreading the same beaten path as others when, in truth, you are always making your own?”

“Then why does it feel like I’m not moving forwards at all?” Lena says, blinking furiously and tilting her head up so that it looks as if she’s speaking more towards the cloudless sky than to Kara.

(But oh how her hand’s grip tightens)

“Because you don’t see what I see. That you, Lena Luthor, are the truest trailblazer I’ve ever known.”

Lena’s smile grows, slowly but surely, all relentless forward momentum.

Now that’s fitting.

///

X.

“Why do you think of that particular passage often?” Lena asks, expression open and curious.

“I don’t know. I read it for the first time after I lost my adoptive father. Back then- I don’t know,” Kara shrugs, a little self-conscious, “I guess it felt profound.”

“How so?” 

Kara fidgets uncomfortably, unsure of how to answer truthfully. 

“In a manner that might be too serious for lunch,” she settles on, letting out a chuckle as weak as the light emitted by the flickering candle between them.

“Ok. I’ll take the hint and won’t push,” Lena says, smile small and charming, a fair attempt at concealing the flash of hurt that crosses her face.

Kara doesn’t speak, uncertain of how to fix her misstep without saying something she shouldn’t.

“Alex and Eliza were having a hard time,” she blurts out. Encouragingly, Lena’s face remains open, the charming but fake smile fading from her expression. “After Jeremiah. Honestly, so was I. It was easy then.”

“It was easy having a hard time?” Lena asks, confused but trying to understand.

(Kara wonders how much better the world would be if there were more people like Lena Luthor in it)

“No. I meant that back then it was easy to put my feelings aside,” Kara licks her lips nervously before continuing. “Mostly because I had to. Alex and Eliza were having a hard time so I didn’t- I didn’t want to- I couldn’t make things harder for them. Not when it sometimes seemed as if they were already coming undone at the seams.   
It was easy to think of it as my duty. To be as unobtrusive as possible,” Kara smiles self-deprecatingly. “I’ve always been good at duty.”

“'I move from that within my heart to my obligations,’” Lena echoes.

“Yes. I admit that it- it frightened me. To see these two women, who had been such pillars to me before- it was scary to see them,” Kara searches for the right word, “ _crumble_.”

“I’m sorry,” Lena says, genuine sympathy coating her words. “That you had to go through that.”

“Thank you. But you don’t have to feel bad. For the people I love,” Kara shrugs, “I’d do anything.”

“Still,” Lena insists, stubborn to the last, “doesn’t mean you should have gone through it.”

“Maybe not. That includes you now too y’know.”

“What do you mean?” 

“You’re my friend Lena. And I love you.”

A pause.

“You’re my friend too Kara.”

///

XI.

“Do you think Hernández loved Sijé?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just- academic curiosity, if you will.” 

“I think the poem he wrote after Sijé’s death should be proof enough that he did, no?” 

“Not necessarily,” Lena says, face darkening with whatever thoughts were pinging around in that brilliant brain of hers. “Death makes people feel odd things. Even the death of a mere acquaintance.”

Kara thinks of all the people back on Krypton she had never met. Thinks of all those she had met but not loved.  
At least not in the manner in which she had loved her family or her teachers or her friends. 

(All those strangers live in her heart now. 

She’s mourned them. She’s prayed for them. She’s spent a not insignificant amount of time thinking of them, of who they were, who they could have been. 

Who they never got to be)

Yes. Kara is familiar with the odd feelings brought on by death. Even the death of a mere acquaintance.

“Hernández was ready to publish his book,” she says, words a little too loud for the ringing silence that has fallen over Lena’s office. “It was done, all written down and ready to go, weeks before it was actually printed. Then he suddenly loses a life-long friend to disease. And now he’s sad and mad and just-  _raging_ at the earth that separates them.”

Lena stares, solemn and lovely and unguarded.

“So he writes a poem. An elegy. Which he proceeds to include in this book, that’s supposed to be a collection of love poems. Y’know, sonnets about romantic desperate love.  
He puts _Elegy_ towards the end of what, unknown to him, would become one of Spain’s best known literary works and, in the process, immortalizes his beloved Sijé forever.”

Kara removes her glasses.

“What greater expression of depthless love could he have made?”

///

XII. ~~consuelo (consolation)~~

Kara carefully lifts her stolen copy of _el rayo que no cesa_ from the nightstand. 

The book looks even more battered now than it did years ago, constant use finally making the title illegible even to her alien eyes.

“Do you know of Miguel Hernández?” she asks, turning the book over and over in her hands. 

“Is he the new cook at Noonan’s?” Alex asks, setting her container of fried rice onto the newly-emptied nightstand and sending Kara a disapproving glance. “Because, Kara, you really have to give the guy a chance. Just because he doesn’t make your sticky buns exactly the same way Duarte did is hardly a good reason to-”

“No no,” Kara interrupts, getting up and setting down the book onto a shelf. Alex follows her movements from her comfortable position resting against Kara’s pillows, careful with herself so as to not cause further pain to her frail human body. 

Kara smiles fondly at her sister, infinitely endeared by the way she pouts further the longer the silence stretches. 

(So at odds with her usual serious countenance)

“Miguel Hernández. The poet.”

“Um, no. I don’t know of him,” Alex admits, prodding at a cut on her jaw carefully and wincing. “Why?”

“I’ve just been re-reading one of his books,” Kara says with a shrug.

“Well, what’s the book about? Poet, you said. So…” Alex squints at Kara, “love poems?” she guesses. “Multiple mentions of poppies? And skulls maybe. Weirdly intense feelings about nature and a lot of masturbation allegories?”

Kara barks out a laugh of joy. Delighted with her sister’s playfulness.

“Actually, yeah,” she says once she’s calmed enough. “To all of the above.”

“A good book then?”

“Yeah. Sentimental and full of feeling. Honestly though, I mostly read it for this one poem of his that I keep going back to.”

Her sister, smart and courageous, capable of going toe-to-toe with the galaxy’s worst armed only with a handgun and an older sibling’s fierce protectiveness, waits her out patiently. 

Kara caves quickly.

“It’s an elegy,” she says. “Dedicated to a friend of his, Ramón Sijé, who had died on Christmas Eve, back in 1935.”

“Wait,” Alex says, scratching idly at her chin, “I think I’ve heard you read this one before. Isn’t it the one where he talks about eating dirt?”

“Yeah. 'I want to gnaw at the earth with my teeth, I want to split the earth apart bit by bit with dry, burning bites. I want to mine the earth until I find you,’”

“Okeeey,” Alex’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead, “the guy really went for it on his dislike of the ground.”

Kara smiles sheepishly.

“I think it makes more sense when you know the story behind the lines.”

“What’s the story then?”

“I can’t remember how factual this actually is but, the story goes that Vicente, that’s Hernández’s brother, used to say that Sijé and Hernández loved each other like brothers. That they had sworn that, if one were to die before the other, the one remaining was to dig the grave himself.  
When Sijé died, Hernández went back to Orihuela, their hometown, intending to bury his friend, as was promised. But he arrived too late.”

“Sijé had already been buried?” Alex guessed.

“Yeah. And, furious and heartbroken and now an oathbreaker, Miguel Hernández did the only thing he could. He wrote a poem.”

“Kara-” Alex starts, concerned by the tears giving a glossy sheen to Kara’s eyes. 

“I- _I can’t bury you_ Alex,” Kara breathes out, bending her head forwards until her forehead rests on her sister’s knee, soundless sobs shaking her frame, “Today, you almost- when it- if you-” 

Kara finds herself unable to string together sentences the right way, words fleeting and not weighty enough for the deep gut-wrenching horror still crawling along her spine. 

She settles for: “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I-”

“Oh, Kara,” Alex whispers, pulling Kara into a fierce embrace, uncaring of runny noses and injured ribs.

Together, they breathe.

///

XIII. 

That night:  
the last three lines of an often-read poem are whispered, again and again and again, against the scratchy fabric of a sweater, the woman who wears it asleep and slowly healing. 

Outside:  
the earth spins, it’s inhabitants doing as they always do, moving onwards, outgrowing the past and looking into the future.

A brighter one. Maybe.

At the very least, a different one. 

///

XIV. 

*Note: grief to consolation is the most common structure for elegies.  
Other accepted elegy structures include (1) grief to anger, (2) grief to reflection, and (3) grief to deeper grief.

///

XV.

The poem ends:

 _I have need of you,_  
_we’ve so many things to speak of,  
friend, compatriot to my soul._


End file.
